Monthly Archives: April 2013

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) has announced plans to partner with Lokoja in Nigeria and nine other cities for its City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP). Working through partnerships with stakeholders including international agencies such as UNISDR, academic and research institutes, private sector actors, and NGOs, the CRPP will develop a comprehensive and integrated urban planning and management approach ...

Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad (Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād), better known by its Hausa name Boko Haram (“Western education is sinful“), is a jihadistmilitant organisation based in the northeast of Nigeria. It is an Islamist movement which strongly opposes man-made laws and westernisation. Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2001, the organisation seeks to establish sharia law in the country. The group is also known for attacking christians and ...

Basil Oru, a migrant farmer in Igbe, Ikorodu in Lagos, frowns at the rising temperatures, along with the irregular rainfall pattern he claims is affecting farm yield and threatening his source of livelihood. He complains that, just as it has been the trend in recent years, the rain is late in coming and thus delaying the planting of certain crops ...

The 24th Governing Council Meeting of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) ended at the weekend in Nairobi Kenya, with the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Government of Ondo State, Nigeria, announcing contributions totaling $5 million to boost the work of the global city agency. The contribution comprises $3 million through the Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing ...

Africa’s largest solar photovoltaic (PV) plant was launched last Thursday in Nouakchott, the capital of Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Built by Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy specialist Masdar, the $32 million 15 megawatts (MW) scheme, which is the first utility-scale solar power installation in the country, will provide up to 10 percent of Mauritania’s power. The plant consists of 29,826 micromorph ...

Due to the untidy and environmentally-unfriendly nature of mechanic villages – they are said to arbitrarily dispose discarded auto parts and waste oil – the authorities feel they deface the cityscape. But the idea of gathering automobile servicing technicians at specified locations has considerably contributed to the eradication of roadside practice. In the 1980s, Oladipo Diya, then Governor of Ogun ...

The International Centre for Energy, Environment & Development (ICEED) in collaboration with Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the Nigerian Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (NACC) have concluded plans to set up national standards for wood burning stoves in Nigeria. This was disclosed by Ewah Eleri, Executive Director of ICEED, during a workshop held recently in ...

The global community is losing up to five percent of global agricultural gross domestic production (GDP) due to land degradation, according to a recent scientific study. The study titled, “The Economics of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought: Methodologies and Analysis for Decision-Making,” was presented during the UNCCD 2nd Scientific Conference which held last week in Bonn, Germany. Former President of ...

Water is an essential resource for human existence and survival. Over the past century, the use of water has been growing at more than twice the rate of global population increase – a development which has raised diverse concern on man’s access to clean and portable water. According to the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP), 70 percent of the world’s freshwater ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have launched a new action plan, tackling for the first time two of the biggest killer diseases of children under five in Nigeria – pneumonia and diarrhoea The plan aims to end preventable deaths of children in the country from these diseases by 2025, which would save over 241,000 lives ...